The 'Gilmore Girls' Revival Might Not Have Happened If It Wasn't For 'Sherlock'

It's elementary, my dear Watson. According to Entertainment Weekly, Gilmore Girls creator Amy Sherman-Palladino was inspired by Sherlock for the upcoming Gilmore Girls Netflix revival. (And, if you haven't yet checked out the BBC's highly watchable crime drama, I'd say you should probably take this as proof you should marathon Sherlock in advance of Season 4, which promises to be particularly eventful.) As has been previously reported by The Hollywood Reporter, the end of the series was announced just 12 days before the end of Season 7 — meaning the ending to Gilmore Girls was a pretty abrupt one.

This abrupt ending meant that there was speculation over the years that a revival would eventually take place — and star Lauren Graham was particularly keen that the show would return in movie form. But Sherman-Palladino wasn't so into this idea: “We wanted to do it off-network and without commercials so we didn’t have Supergirl flying through.” Instead, EW reports, she found inspiration across the pond. Said Sherman-Palladino:

I’m massively into Sherlock and what I love about Sherlock is the format is longer than an hour. They’re their own little mini-movies. It felt like a format that would work well for us on a storytelling level and as writers we would enjoy delving into.

It may come as a surprise to those who've watched both of the shows that we have Sherlock to thank for the new Gilmore Girls revival. While the first scene of Gilmore Girls opens with blue sky, green lawn and an opulent white building (which turns out to be the well-ordered inn Lorelai is currently working for), Sherlock starts by showing Dr.Watson's PTSD-induced nightmares of combat in the army. While the color palette for Gilmore Girls is always cozy — autumnal hues dominate — Sherlock's camerawork often seems to labor under a gray filter, which has the effect of making even beautiful London look equally sinister and drab in the show. And while both shows are funny, Sherlock's laconic brand of humor is worlds away from the cozy humor characteristic of that of Gilmore Girls.

But while it may seem surprising that Sherman-Palladino cites Sherlock as an influence, it's not totally unexpected. After all, Sherman-Palladino's influences are famously wide-ranging, and in an interview in 2014 with Vulture, she cited everything from the 1948 Fred Astaire musical Easter Parade to Mark Twain's house as an inspiration:

We had just bought a giant, old, creaky house, and we were decorating it — I kid you not — and we were kind of obsessed with the shit that Mark Twain did in his house, so we were like, Let’s fly to Mark Twain’s house because it’s creaky. So we went to Connecticut, and we stayed at this inn, and it was October, leafing season. People were pulling us over going, “Excuse me, do you know which way the pumpkin patch is?” I’m like, “Are you shitting me?” I come from the Valley, where everything’s like, Heeey, there’s another pharmacy! So we went back to the inn, and the concierge was a French woman, and I went up to the room, and I said to my husband, “What if I placed the show, like, here? Like, in this place?” He goes, “Sure, why not?” And I sat down, and I got out the pad from the hotel, and I literally wrote, like, the first three scenes of Gilmore Girls on the pad. The inn is called the Mayflower. It’s now gotten a lot fancier.

Viewed from this light and given Sherlock's unbelievable popularity — and, y'know, the pure fact of Benedict Cumberbatch's existence — it was only going to be a matter of time before one amazing show influenced another. Still... if you go out drinking tonight, raise a glass to Benedict Cumberbatch: detective, Star Trek villain, and now, Gilmore Girls restorer.